Jane Mobley - Phantasmagoria

[dem bones]

Jane Mobley (ed.) - Phantasmagoria: Tales of Fantasy and the Supernatural (Doubleday/ Anchor, 1977)

Edmund Dulac The Buried Moon

Jane Mobley - Preface

I. The Wondrous Fair: Magical Fantasy

Anonymous - Arthur and Gorlagon
George MacDonald - The Golden Key
Lord Dunsany - The Fortress Unvanquishable Save for Sacnoth
Theodore Sturgeon - The Silken Swift
Robert Bloch - The Dark Isle
Jorge Luis Borges - The Rejected Sorcerer
Nicholas Stuart Gray - According to Tradition
Andre Norton - The Gifts of Asti
Ursula K. Le Guin - The Rule of Names
Sylvia Townsend Warner - Winged Creatures
Peter S. Beagle - Sia

II. The Passing Strange: Supernatural Fiction

Sheridan Le Fanu - An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street
Algernon Blackwood - Confession
Oliver Onions - The Beckoning Fair One
M. R. James - "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad"
Peter S. Beagle - Come Lady Death
Elizabeth Jane Howard - Three Miles Up
Doris Betts - Benson Watts Is Dead and in Virginia

Am beginning to feel sorry for Phantasmagoria. Have had a copy hanging around for years and each time it nears top of the to read pile, another anthology comes along to shunt it back down again. Maybe somebody will talk us through it to spare us one of my mind-numbing excuse-for-"reviews"?

[ropardoe]

I don't know the book but it strikes me as an odd collection.  The supernatural tales are almost all painfully familiar, but there are some interesting ones among the fantasies.  I've never quite got over my unicorn phase, so Sturgeon's "The Silken Swift" has to be a favourite.  The Dunsany is good too, and a number of the others are completely new to me.  And (as I said in another thread) the Dulac cover is brilliant (when was he ever not?).

[dem bones]

It was the cover painting and title attracted me. Have read (and enjoyed) Robert Bloch's contribution in Peter Haining's The Magic Valley Travellers, but, Arthur and Gorlagon aside, that's about it for the fantasy content. Will happily accept your endorsement of Theodore Sturgeon's The Silken Swift. Much as I love his work, I've an aversion to all things unic**n. Funny thing, can't remember for the life of me what triggered it ...